Letter: Troubling headline

I have been troubled by your front page headline of July 1: “Court: Corp. religion trumps health.”

The petulant tone of this headline seemed to imply that corporations are entities somehow totally disconnected from their human executives. I suspect you would find this concept offensive if a greedy corporate executive were to argue that his business is obligated to make money for his stockholders, and his personal religion should have nothing to do with the management of his business.

The notion that business should operate with “freedom from religion,” rather than freedom of religion, is toxic. It reflects the equally misguided notion that our constitution guarantees “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion.” This “freedom of worship” means that you can worship wherever and however you want as long as you agree to leave your religion in your house of worship when you exit. This is the same kind of “freedom” experienced in countries where Christians, Jews and Muslims endure extreme persecution if they attempt to act according to their religions.

In the case of Hobby Lobby, business owners whose religion prohibits abortion were okay with contraception but they did not want to participate in paying for “morning-after” pills which cause early abortion.

We need to remember that “conscientious objection” was a concept long respected when our nation had a military draft. It is not a brand-new, right-wing aberration. The Supreme Court was correct in this case. Your headline was off base. (And I am not even mentioning that abortion does absolutely nothing for the health of the unborn child.)

Your comment that the "morning after pill" causes early abortion is scientifically incorrect. It is not a abortifacient. The morning after pill works primarily by preventing ovulation, and in some cases prevents the egg from implanting in the uterus. By preventing unintended pregnancies, the morning after pill in effect prevents abortions. By the way the Supreme Court clarified their Hobby Lobby ruling to say that it applies to all contraception covered by the ACA, NOT just the ones Hobby Lobby objected to,